Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [83]
His upper half rose fairly easily, but as soon as he began to budge his lower half, it became far harder. He grabbed again, hand over hand, and lurched his weight up the corner of the bed. He hung on to the top of the bedpost, supporting his weight solely with his arms, his legs dangling limp.
He would drop soon. It was now or never.
With only a quick glance over at the window, he lunged. He successfully grabbed the windowsill and slumped against the wall, pulling hard to prevent his body weight from dragging him right back down to the floor again.
Would he be able to manipulate the window latch while holding his bulk with one hand? He craned his neck to see. Of course, there was no latch on the window—it was just a simple pane of thick glass fused into the frame. That made the decision easy, then.
He let go of the windowsill with one hand, and before he fell to the floor, he made a fist and smashed it through the window. The crash made an exquisite sound, an unmistakable sound of emergency and desperation that rang out across the meadows around the tiny recuperative cabin. He caught his weight on the window opening, his wrist crunching against broken glass. He hung there for a moment before his arms gave out and he collapsed back onto the floor in a painful thud, his hand bleeding.
Nothing. Then, footsteps came faintly, then stronger, crunching up the trail outside.
The door unlocked and opened. A cleric looked in and surveyed the scene. He found the bed pulled diagonally out of position, the bedclothes off kilter. He found Mubin sitting under the window in a heap, his hand balled in a fist, trickling blood.
“Get me a wagon,” Mubin said.
Shock slowed the cleric’s response. “What?” he finally said.
“I said, get me a wagon.”
“You can’t … You need your rest. You’re supposed to—”
“As a paragon of the Sigiled caste, and as a knight of the Order of the Reliquary, and as a nobly-appointed scholar and champion of the Blessed caste of Bant, I command you to bring a wagon, right… now.”
The cleric blinked. “Yes, my lord, right away.”
He ran off, and Mubin allowed himself a sigh of relief.
NAYA
At Mayael’s behest, the godcaller elves had assembled a host of Naya’s gargantuan beasts. The colossal creatures had trampled a clearing in the wood, letting the sun shine down upon them with no canopy in the way. The destruction of the trees had affected some elvish residences, but Mayael, as the spiritual leader of the elves, had insisted. She looked down on the assembled throng from the sunsail tents that served as her chambers, listening to their grunts and bellows echo throughout the jungle.
Her attendant entered, the girl’s hands clasped in disquiet.
“Anima,” said the attendant. “May I have a word?”
Mayael looked up. “Of course, Sasha.” “This is wrong,” whispered the attendant. “Forgive me,” she added hastily.
“What is?” asked Mayael. “Speak up.”
“No, it’s not my place.”
“I can’t have you holding something from me, Sasha. Loose your tongue.”
“I—I know you’re … You believe in what you’re doing, Anima. But I can’t help feeling that this is wrong. Assembling this army is … blasphemy. The gargantuans are not ours to order around like this. They’re Naya’s gods. Who are we to send our gods off to fight some unknown war for us?”
“They’re not fighting it for us; they’ll be fighting it with us. And it’s not for some frivolous cause. Do you think I would call them this way, were these not the direst of times? This is the word of Progenitus! This is a time of prophecy, the crux of the meaning of our very civilization. This is the time that we need the gargantuans most, and they need us.”
“But what if we’re wrong? What if this is not the way?”
Mayael’s eyes narrowed. “My vision said it was. Now who’s being blasphemous?”
“I’m sorry, Anima. Of course you know best.”
Mayael’s face relaxed. She sighed. “No, I am sorry. Here I ask you to tell me what you’re thinking, and then snap at you for telling it. The strange thing